GregHowley.com

It's been many months since I first saw The Last Jedi. After first seeing it, I'd commented that I couldn't really give any kind of in-depth analysis without seeing it a second time. And I never got around to seeing it in the theater a second time. So now that I've had a chance to watch the movie at home, I have some further thoughts.

First off, Star Wars has never been science fiction. It's always been a fantasy story in space, with space wizards, and knights battling giant monsters using laser swords. So I don't want to nitpick the scientific detail too much. I won't get too deeply into how the artificial gravity on ships works or why the blaster cannons on a star destroyer fire in a parabolic arc rather than straight. But I do have some issues.

Stupid Bombers

First off, I'll be the first to admit that Star Wars has always been a fantasy franchise rather than a science fiction franchise, and that you've got to let certain things go. But the whole premise of needing to fly bombers within 100 feet of a target to "drop" bombs on it in space is just idiotic. The movie behaves as if gravity is the main thing propelling the bombs, but if that's (somehow) the case, there's nothing stopping them from "dropping" those bombs from way way further off. At first, whatever internal artificial gravity exists inside the bomber starts them "falling". Then, momentum carries them a ways until they're as close to the target as they would have needed to be anyway. This scene irritates me.

Finn's Attempted Desertion

I get that this scene was trying to show a momentary lapse on Finn's part - an attempt at showing a flawed hero. He wasn't deserting! He was just trying to go and save Rey! Right? Still, it bothered me. Fans will forgive and forget, just like they forgot that Ewoks captured and tried to eat the rebels before becoming friendly.

Leia's Vacuum Flight

My problem here wasn't so much that she shouldn't have been able to pull a Superman in space. It should take very little actual force to push anything in a vacuum. So even if Leia were barely-trained, I can buy this part. She's certainly had time to learn a few things since leaving Endor. I even buy that she wouldn't have instantly freeze-dried, since there's no atmosphere to conduct heat away from her body. My problem is her remaining conscious through the explosion and being sucked into space. Actually, it seems like maybe she was unconscious, and then woke up in vacuum. And she was exhibiting no pained expression - vacuum has certainly got to be uncomfortable at best. I've got far less of a problem with this scene than I'd had initially.

Unnecessary Casino Detour

The needless convoluted complexity of this sequence borders on prequel-levels, and the fact that it's entirely inconseqeuntial to the plot leads me to wonder why it was ever included. Our heroes have a plan to allow the fleet to escape from the light speed tracking. They can shut it down for just a minute, and then Poe on the main ship can mutiny and take over the fleet to initiate a jump, which can't be tracked. But first, they need to get on board the lead ship, which they've intuited must contain the only system to track them through light speed. And Imperial security is too good, so they need TEH CODE CRACKOR! Maz Canata casually relates to them the only super-hacker she knows, all while in the midst of a gunfight, and then blasts off with her jetpack. WHO ANSWERS A PHONE CALL WHILE BEING SHOT AT?!? Then, Rose and Poe get to Canto Bight and find a different super-code-breaker who rescues then betrays them and they get captured and this whole convoluted plan means nothing. On top of that, they unintentionally betray the resistance's getaway and many escape shuttles get destroyed. So the entire resistance was boned in the end because of a parking violation. It almost feels like all this is to tell us that the plucky heroes who buck authority to enact their own plan have the wrong idea and are just idiots. Is that the moral here?

The Slow-Mo Chase

I guess I'm just supposed to write off the technical aspects of this and not think about it, because the more I think about it, the less sense it makes. The rebel fleet has enough fuel for only one more light speed leap, or for about 24 hours-ish of flight. So rather than use their fuel to make the jump to light speed, they move away slowly and plan to sneak off in stealth shuttles when the fuel is maybe 90% gone, after losing the bulk of the fleet. But then after the fuel is pretty much gone, Vice Admiral Holdo is still able to go to light speed to destroy the pursuing ship. Wouldn't it have made more sense to split up the fleet? The one ship that can track you through light speed can't follow you all!

The Light Speed Weapon

Given that light speed as a weapon is a thing that we've now confirmed can happen, I've got many questions. Firstly, why hasn't anyone thought of this before? Any time any new technology comes into existance, the first thing people want to use it for is as a weapon. Sadly. Second, does this now mean that any X-Wing fighter can go to light speed and destroy a star destroyer all by itself? Because this changes war completely in the Star Wars universe. The Death Star battle would have been totally different if any one of those X-Wings could have taken out the Death Star that simply. I mean, the light speed attack looks like it completely goes through shields! And if it's a matter of mass, and an X-Wing isn't massive enough, then we can simply modify the small light speed engines that X-Wings use and attach them to asteroids, then fly those asteroids into Star Destroyers. Of course, I'm sure that the empire will now build a new light speed powered mass driver weapon and launch salvos of light speed missles back at the Rebel fleet. If the next movie ignores this, I will be sad.

Grumpy Luke

It's kind of a bummer to see the hero of the best Star Wars movies reduced to a curmudgeony old man. It sucks to see whiny young luke, who had to learn maturity and control, now teasing Rey with cruel sarcasm. He's kind of a jerk. But there's a glimmer of something potentially interesting when he speaks of something new - the whole Jedi/Sith dichotomy being dissolved, and something novel taking its place. Of course there will always be good and evil, heroes and villains. And of course Rey should avoid the temptation to use anger and hatred to power The Force - that which was once called The Dark Side. But the ancient tenets of The Jedi that counciled to never build human connections, along with many other traditional Jedi values, should perhaps be left in the past. This is a really interesting theme.

The Weird Dark Force Pit Acid Trip

Soo there's this weird tentacle-y pit on the island where Luke lives, which represents a Dark place, balancing the light-side force on the island. Rey stupidly goes up to it, and for some reason gets sucked in. She touches this weird mirror wall and sees weird infinite double-reflections of herself, then somehow comes to the revelation that her parents were nobody special. How is this supposed to make any sense? I haven't seen anything this nonsensically psychadelic since Muppet Treasure Island. Or maybe Jacob's Ladder.

Rey's Parents, and the Absence of Destiny

I actually really like the idea that Rey's parents weren't someone special. That trope was getting a bit much. But the way it was portrayed and revealed here felt really strange.

Red Salt Planet, and Planet-Taster Guy

This tweet says it all.

the craziest character in Star Wars history is the guy who tastes a new planet and goes “salt.” effing lunatic

— Owen Ellickson (@onlxn) December 20, 2017

So that whole final assault on all the AT-ATs and the big paper towel roll of lasery doom seemed to make about as much sense as ten guys on foot charging a nuclear submarine. It did allow them to drive home the whole save something we love rather than destroying something we hate theme, but like so much of the rest of the movie, it just ended up feeling awkward.

Luke Force Projection Fight

Parts of this I liked. Other parts make very little sense. How did Luke physically touch Leia? How did he hand her those metal dice?

I really liked how obvious it was that Luke was delaying, avoiding any contact. Of course, if he could touch Leia...

If you look closely, Kylo Ren's feet are disturbing the white salt atop the red dust and leaving footprints, but Luke isn't. That was a great hint.

And I get that projecting himself across the galaxy was a huge strain, but why did it have to kill Luke? Kylo and Rey did it and nobody died. Plus, Luke had that place of power.

Snoke's Anticlimactic End

This was perhaps one of the things I didn't know how to feel about just after seeing the movie for the first time - I had to process. In retrospect, as jarring and anticlimactic as his death was, I'm okay with it. It probably could have been portrayed better, and I thought the franchise had previously established that you couldn't remotely turn on/off a lightsaber with the force. Couldn't anyone in a duel just turn off the opponent's light saber? I digress. I'm okay with Snoke's death.

Summary

There were parts of the movie I really liked. Poe picking on Hux. Kylo's betrayal and the ensuing fight against the imperial guards. The lightspeed kamikazi. Luke's interaction with R2D2 and Chewbacca. But there was a lot of weird, a lot of awkward, and a heck of a lot of nonsense. The movie had me constantly off-balance, and not in a good way. It just wasn't coherent. The entire film was a nonstop series of wild left turns, and jerky stops and starts. And the plotholes. So many plotholes.

There was also a ton of prequel-level bullshit. In the casino at Canto Bight, why do they swing the camera past an alien who then randomly sings an opera note?? Why does a porg accompany Chewbacca onto the Milennium Falcon? There are plenty of these, and they are dumb.

I also wonder why they chose to leave Leia's character alive when Carrie Fisher died. The sucked-into vacuum moment would have been a perfect end, as abrupt and meaningless as the deaths of Admiral Ackbar and Luke Skywalker. Perhaps they just didn't want to have to throw out Fisher's final performances in her scenes later in the film. But I now have to wonder what they'll do with Leia in the third film. They've shown that they can CG her, so I guess that option's always on the table.

You've likely seen the right-wing complaints about the film being too liberal because the empire had only white men leading and the resistance had only women in command. Much of the complaining I've found has been a bit exaggerated and at least partially not based in fact. I'll completely agree that the film feels liberal since it has a diverse cast and villifies war profiteering. The complaints I'm seeing now feel like complaints about Ohura in the original Star Trek series or complaints about how New Hope hates ruthless authoritarian regimes.

Overall, I'd say The Last Jedi is better than the prequels, worse than the original trilogy, and not as good as The Force Awakens.